Looking for the perfect text editor

[Joe Belmaati]

I have been trying out a bunch of different text editors, but I have never found the perfect one for my needs. The nature of this post is to query webmasters as for what they are using to code their sites. Right now I am using a nice and free editor for Windows called Crimson. It has many things I like and use, but also a few drawbacks. Here's a wishlist:

* Syntax highlighting for PHP, Perl, Javascript, CSS, and HTML

* FTP Save as Remote, Open as Remote - possibly furhter extended with CHMOD capability, and even better with site directory tree in left pane

* Ability to search across multiple lines - i.e. a chunk of code that spans three lines

* Ability to save as *nix file

* Ability to define local working directories

* Ability to open a large text file - i.e. a 100MB sql batch file or Apache logfile

I have tried the following, and most offer some of the above mentioned requirements, but none match all of them:

UltraEdit, EditPad Pro, Crimson Editor, Homesite, Emacs

Any hints or recommendations are much appreciated! :D

Sincerely,
Joe Belmaati
Copenhagen Denmark

[netguy]

Joe, I think you'll have difficulty trying to do everything you listed in one package, so I would recommend having more than one tool in your toolbox.

Most of your requirements can be handled by HomeSite. I'm not overly excited with HS's FTP deployment, however, so we use WebDrive with HomeSite where we have immediate push-button access (HS tabs) to dozens of sites across several different servers (WebDrive will mirror each of the servers as "W" "X" "Y" "Z" directories, for example, on your local hard drive).

This allows us to make changes 'live' to each server, combined with redundant backups (dedicated server backups, plus HandyBackup software brings a copy of the changed files back to our local PCs every hour.

As far as manipulating huge log files, we always use UltraEdit. It can handle 4GB files that most other editors choke on.

Steve

[photon]

Check out HTML-Kit. It will do most if not all, of what you're asking for--and it's free!

[Hester]

I recommend Notepad2 [flos-freeware.ch] for everyday use (superb highlighting) and PSPad [pspad.com] for more advanced work. (It has an amazing set of tools, such as an eyedropper to grab colour codes and a decimal to hex and binary converter.)

[dreamcatcher]

netguy is right, use different editors for different tasks. I switch between conText, 1stPage 2000 and jEdit. Sometimes just for the fun of it. :)

[Joe Belmaati]

Thanks very much for the replies everyone. For text editing, I still think I prefer Crimson Editor. For looking at large batch files and Apache logfiles UltraEdit looks very nice. I played around a bit with the other recommended editors and all seemed to have their strengths and weaknesses. The webdrive ftp option is really cool too. It's good to have a tool box, and it seems that you can get very far without even forking over any dough..!

[Hester]

I find syntax highlighting superb for spotting errors in my code. If I miss something out, the rest of the document might change to be a different colour, so I know something's wrong.

[txbakers]

my favorite is still TextPad

[kumarsena]

anyone tried synEditor?
pretty good, and has a small footprint too (altough im sure many other do as well..)

[MatthewHSE]

I use EditPadPro in conjunction with WebDrive. I sent some feedback to the programmer of EditPad awhile back, and from the reply I received, I'd say the next version will have everything you've mentioned. I think the FTP capabilities are the only ones EditPad is missing, and they're scheduled for the next release.

And you can't beat the EditPad PasteBook! ;)

[coho75]

Another vote for TextPad here. It makes life much easier.

[Emperor]

Hey guys,

Believe it or not I use Visual C++ 6.0 for my text editing. About the only thing it does is hilight HTML tags (which are outdated because VC6 is 5 years old).

So I was looking for a nice program myself. I don't need anything the first poster wants. All I need is syntax coloring for (X)HTML and PHP (where of course I can choose the colors) and a selection margin on the left (where you click and it selects the whole row).

I'm looking for something solid with a light footprint (that will load very quickly like Notepad does).

What do you think?

[MatthewHSE]

I'll stick with EditPad for my recommendation. There's a free version available, and the exe is only about 750kb. It loads like lightning, and can even be run from removable media like CD's or even a floppy.

[Emperor]

Hi Matthew,

Yeah, I was just checking out their site. Do you know if the free EditPadLite does syntax highlighting?

I'm kinda anal about installing stuff on my computer or else I would just try it out.

It looks nice and small, exactly what I need. The full version has spell checker and other stuff that I would never use.

Thanks,
Cyrus

[MatthewHSE]

Whoops, I thought the free version included syntax highlighting but upon checking I found that it doesn't. If free is your main concern and syntax highlighting is important to you, I'd say you'd be better off using Crimson editor. If you can afford to buy EditPad Pro, that's what I'd recommend. I've never used an editor yet that comes close to its features.

[wruppert]

I believe that EditPlus at [editplus.com...] meets just about all of your requirements. It costs 30USD and you can download a 30 day trial.

[yngwin]

KWrite meets practically all of your requirements, it is part of the KDE desktop environment on *nixes. ;-)

[doortodoororganics]

edit plus, html-kit, dreamweaver mx (for multiline, multi-file find and replace)

[Rumbas]

Hey Joe, nice to another Copenhagen'er on the board.

I use UltraEdit for most of my raw text editing. Handles huge files better than anything else I've ever come across.

Dejligt at se endnu en dansker her ;)

[creative craig]

I use Editpad, does all I need with a little extra :)